richard pinhas is one of france’s major experimental musicians, pioneers of
electronic sound, essential figure in the development of electronic rock… his
stature in france is analogous to tangerine dream’s in germany. his
experimenting with electronics and electronic works is precursors to industrial
and techno music and his guitar work can be compared with robert frip’s. after
taking his degree in guitar on 17 he formed his first band in 1968 and than as
philosophy student at sorbonne he formed schizo, his second band. he received
phd in philosophy studying with gilles deluze. than he focused on his third band
heldon with which they released 7 albums from 1974-78. pinhas also released 5
solo albums simultaneously with heldon work until 1982. in 1984 he left music
re-focusing on philosophy but he returned in 1990. cuneiform is starting with
reissuing heldon and pinhas works in 1991 and also releasing his new solo albums
as well as collaborations with artists as peter frohmader (fossil culture), john
livengood and pascal comelade. he also formed and ongoing project schizotrope
with french cyber punk author maurice dantec that fused guitar, electronics and
spoken words from texts by dantec and deluze. they have one live recording on
cuneiform (the life and death of marie zorn). ‘tranzition’ is album recorded in
his heldon electronic studio, some of guitars were recorded live and everything
was mixed down at heldon and ramses studio. in producing his tracks, he just use
guitar, processing systems and electronics but on this one he has some drums
(philippe simon), violin (antonie paganotti), additional electronics and vocal
samples (jerome schmidt). tracks are slow, quiet and long, slowly evolving in
their ten to twenty four minutes. ambient guitar flow is supported by subtle and
beautiful melodic electronics and broken drum rhythm structure. trancey feeling
is evident and always present. you can easily flow together with the sound
stream that will carry you somewhere far into your mind. recommended for
krautrock fans of can or neu!, new ambient listeners of pub or vladislav delay,
as well as for those who like noise and improv sound. pinhas is just using
guitar to make electronic music and ambient but he still sound fresh,
contemporary and not obsolete.